It’s been said that, should you be of a certain sensibility, a friend that routinely introduces you to new music is one of the best friends you can have. I’ve been very lucky to have a few of those types of friends, over the years. While this post is ostensibly about punk rock records, it’s really more those friends.
As mentioned back on this recent post, my grade-school classmate Brad — who was basically a bigger, (way) more athletic and (way, way) more popular kid than myself — first bonded over our mutual love of music. At first, it was KISS, which was a very common, bonding element in the late `70s. As mentioned in this post, then as now, you either loved KISS or you loathed them vehemently, and Brad and I — despite being polar opposites in practically every other capacity — both entirely loved them. Our respective mothers were great friends, so we would be regularly thrown into social situations, early on -- an awkward pairing of beefy soccer star with scrawny sci-fi nerd. But when our mutual KISS fandom was fully disclosed, that seemed to bridge the major gaps between us.
But Brad was almost always one step ahead.
Here we were some unfathomable years earlier … at some grade-school Christmas pageant (or something). Brad’s sitting in the forefront. I’m the little dweeb in the back. To my right is my great friend Danny, eulogized here (and first immortalized as Rocky here).
Again, recounted on this post, by the summer of 1979, Brad had largely abandoned KISS (who were pushing their widely-maligned Dynasty album, at the time, which I’ll continue to defend) in favor of immersing himself into his preoccupation with the Beatles and, more specifically, the “Paul is Dead” conspiracy theory, and dragging me right along with him. We spent the entirety of that summer and much of the following months playing records backwards and freaking ourselves out. But that horse was only going to run so far, it being the precipice of the 1980s.
By the time Punk Rock had arrived in force, Brad was typically a few miles ahead of me. We’d all heard the Sex Pistols and The Clash, by this point (I’d been gifted the first albums by The Clash and, oddly, The Vibrators, in a cache of promo LP’s my father had shipped to my sister and I from London while on extended assignment for Forbes Magazine). I was into it, and starting to explore other bands like Devo, The Jim Carroll Band, Blondie, The Ramones, The B-52's and Adam & the Ants, all of whom I loved. But Brad had typically done a much deeper dive.
I remember arriving at the house Brad’s mother had rented out in Quogue, in the summer of 1981, and being practically blown right off the porch by the fire-power of the stereo that came with the place, a bit of consumer electronics that Brad was fully availing himself to. Feeling woefully out-of-step in my Pink Floyd The Wall t-shirt, I found Brad in the living room, steadily giving the speakers a worrying workout (and his mother a splitting headache) via weapons-grade airings of Nobody's Heroes by a band called The Stiff Little Fingers, So Alone by an unhealthy looking gent named Johnny Thunders and the double-album of The Great Rock N’ Roll Swindle, which featured a hilariously sloppy cover of “Johnny B. Goode” by the Sex Pistols. I don’t know how he was first hearing this stuff, but Brad was unwittingly showing me up to be a total punk-rock dilettante.
Of all the records we spun, that summer, however, there were two in particular that really sank their hooks into me, and both continue to be all-time favorites today, regardless of era or categorization. Those albums were the eponymous debut LP by Generation X and Concrete by 999.
With the former, all it really took was a solitary play of “Ready Steady Go” to get me onboard. Where their relative forbears in the Pistols and The Clash repeatedly sang about destroying all things “rock n’ roll,” Generation X remained avowed fans, proudly name-checking outfits like the Beatles, the Stones and Bob Dylan in this ode to a mid-to-late `60s pop music television program. But that reverence was brazenly offset by this amazing sound — the sheer tone of Derwood Andrews’ guitar -- a brash, electrified roar that was at once densely melodic and unthinkably distorted, and it was all over this LP. Coupled with suitably yobbish choruses, Tony James’ insistent bass, Mark Laff’s pugnacious drums and the distinctive vocals of a gent who was shortly to take over the world, that being the endearingly sneery Billy goddamn Idol, Generation X was fucking unstoppable. While dismissed by many of the punk orthodoxy for being unapologetically poppy, there was just no arguing with that first album, allegedly recorded in a single week with finished cuts often culled from manic, single takes. To this day, it sounds like precious little else, and Derwood’s guitar still gets my blood rushing (especially the intro clang of "Kleenex").
Here they were lip-psyching to “Ready Steady Go" on “Top of The Pops”…
Even the album cover was awesome — a smeary, over-saturated, sepia-drenched portrait of a bunch of leather-clad nogoodnicks from an explosive future.
The other big record, Concrete by 999, wasn’t quite as overt, but matched Generation X in its insistency and attitude. Kicking off with energetic “So Greedy” (the first song Brad played for me), Concrete boasted a taut, musical finesse you probably weren’t going to find on records by their punky contemporaries. Where Generation X's songs sounded feral and deliberately rudimentary, 999’s playing was tight, urgent and sharp, but with more of an airier sonic dynamic than a lot of their peers. I didn’t know this, at the time, but 999 was formed by a gent named Keith Lucas, who’d honed his chops some years earlier as a guitarist playing in the pub rock band, Kilburn & the The High Roads alongside fellow proto-punk rocker Ian Dury (later of the Blockheads). Swept up in the energy and impact of the era, Lucas quit the High Roads, changed his name to the punkier Nick Cash (as in: to steal), and formed 999 — named after the British emergency telephone number — with his brother Guy on lead guitar.
Somewhat ironically, by the time Concrete was released in 1981, 999 were being perceived, in British Punk circles, to be second-stringers pretty much on their descent, following their more well-received albums like 999 and Separates, featuring incendiary singles like “Emergency” and “Homicide.” But back in Quogue, we didn’t have that context. All I knew was that this 999 record sounded liked an explosion of pure adrenalin that could not be found on most of the rock albums of the day, when the rest of the world was determined to keep listening to Journey, the J. Geils Band and Billy Squier.
Beyond the hiccupy freneticism of “So Greedy,” there were covers of garage nuggets like “Little Red Riding Hood” by Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs and “Fortune Teller” by the Rolling Stones, as well as stomping chant-alongs like “Public Enemy No.1,” “Break It Up" and “Don’t You Know I Need You.” Beyond that, alongside some filler like “Silent Anger” and “Mercy Mercy,” the Nines tried their hand at more exotic fare than most of their safety-pinned peers via atmospheric workouts like “Bongos on the Nile” and “Taboo,” but the “big single” was “Obsessed,” a frantic homage to the Spaghetti Western scores of Ennio Morricone, replete with “hoo-hah” chants and suitably twangy guitar hooks, all framing a song about Nick Cash’s fiery libido. Here they are performing it (well, miming along to it) with great, pogo-y enthusiasm, on a children’s show (!!!) called “Cheggers Plays Pop”
At my first opportunity, back in the city, I hungrily sought out both Generation X and Concrete, but they were not entirely simple to track down. This being just prior to my discovery (via my pal Spike) of the myriad joys of record shopping in Greenwich Village, I took Brad’s tip and checked out the Crazy Eddie’s on East 57th Street, just off of Third Avenue, who had a surprisingly enviable selection of imported vinyl. This shortly became a regular stop, for me.
By the following summer, all things Punk had given way to all things Hardcore Punk, and Brad was still ahead of the pack, along with our mutual friend Rich, who’d turned me onto bands like The Mob, Flipper and the fabled New York Thrash cassette. Brad, meanwhile had moved on from late `70’s British Punk to evangelize homegrown hardcore outfits like Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Black Flag, DOA, the Circle Jerks and this amazing compilation called Let Them Eat Jellybeans, which opened up a whole new world of options. Things were happening in real time, now, and life was getting genuinely exciting.
Funnily enough, about a year earlier, I’d been taken to a dude ranch in Wyoming wherein my family befriended a family from Washington D.C. named the Blows. The youngest of the Blow clan (and yes, that was their real name) was this kid named Wendel, who was slightly older than myself. Wendel mopily stomped around with a shaved head and combat boots. As I recall, Wendel also had a habit of spitting at my feet when we crossed paths. In any case, he was allegedly a bass player in a local band called S.O.A. (which stood for State of Alert, although I almost had my lights punched out when I questioned whether it would be more grammatically correct to say Alertness). Unsurprisingly, Wendel and I never became friends, but one of the bands Brad was touting that following summer was none other than S.O.A., whose music on the Flex Your Head compilaton (another sterling Brad recommendation) was truly bracing. As a footnote for the non-record geeks amongst you, S.O.A.’s lead singer was one Henry Garfield, who later changed his name to Rollins, joined Black Flag and the rest is blah blah blah.
As further and further summers went by and we all assumed our respective trajectories of adulthood, our paths and our tastes naturally diverged. I remember running into Brad a few years later, and he’d started listening to bands I’d consider unthinkable, like Lynyrd Skynyrd. Rich, meanwhile, became a full-time Deadhead, for a while, although I can’t say I have any idea what he’s into these days. I pretty much stayed the course, and invariably take my preferred music way more seriously than I arguably should. I still listen to records like Generation X and Concrete to this day (although you won’t find the latter on Spotify, for those of you addicted to lazy convenience).
But I will absolutely never forget how these friends -– and countless others like Zachary T, Billy K, Ralph M, John C, Sean H, Rob B, Rob D, Jay F, Charlie F, Walter W, Tim R, Ben K and several more -– opened those initial doors for me, infusing and enriching my life with those sounds that retain the freshness and intensity of the feelings I experienced when I first heard them.
For that, I will always be grateful.
ADDENDUM:
Brad and I in the summer of 2001, just prior to my wedding...
Some of the original vinyl discussed in the paragraphs above....
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Vinyl Summers
It’s been said that, should you be of a certain sensibility, a friend that routinely introduces you to new music is one of the best friends you can have. I’ve been very lucky to have a few of those types of friends, over the years. While this post is ostensibly about punk rock records, it’s really more those friends.
As mentioned back on this recent post, my grade-school classmate Brad — who was basically a bigger, (way) more athletic and (way, way) more popular kid than myself — first bonded over our mutual love of music. At first, it was KISS, which was a very common, bonding element in the late `70s. As mentioned in this post, then as now, you either loved KISS or you loathed them vehemently, and Brad and I — despite being polar opposites in practically every other capacity — both entirely loved them. Our respective mothers were great friends, so we would be regularly thrown into social situations, early on -- an awkward pairing of beefy soccer star with scrawny sci-fi nerd. But when our mutual KISS fandom was fully disclosed, that seemed to bridge the major gaps between us.
But Brad was almost always one step ahead.
Here we were some unfathomable years earlier … at some grade-school Christmas pageant (or something). Brad’s sitting in the forefront. I’m the little dweeb in the back. To my right is my great friend Danny, eulogized here (and first immortalized as Rocky here).
Again, recounted on this post, by the summer of 1979, Brad had largely abandoned KISS (who were pushing their widely-maligned Dynasty album, at the time, which I’ll continue to defend) in favor of immersing himself into his preoccupation with the Beatles and, more specifically, the “Paul is Dead” conspiracy theory, and dragging me right along with him. We spent the entirety of that summer and much of the following months playing records backwards and freaking ourselves out. But that horse was only going to run so far, it being the precipice of the 1980s.
By the time Punk Rock had arrived in force, Brad was typically a few miles ahead of me. We’d all heard the Sex Pistols and The Clash, by this point (I’d been gifted the first albums by The Clash and, oddly, The Vibrators, in a cache of promo LP’s my father had shipped to my sister and I from London while on extended assignment for Forbes Magazine). I was into it, and starting to explore other bands like Devo, The Jim Carroll Band, Blondie, The Ramones, The B-52's and Adam & the Ants, all of whom I loved. But Brad had typically done a much deeper dive.
I remember arriving at the house Brad’s mother had rented out in Quogue, in the summer of 1981, and being practically blown right off the porch by the fire-power of the stereo that came with the place, a bit of consumer electronics that Brad was fully availing himself to. Feeling woefully out-of-step in my Pink Floyd The Wall t-shirt, I found Brad in the living room, steadily giving the speakers a worrying workout (and his mother a splitting headache) via weapons-grade airings of Nobody's Heroes by a band called The Stiff Little Fingers, So Alone by an unhealthy looking gent named Johnny Thunders and the double-album of The Great Rock N’ Roll Swindle, which featured a hilariously sloppy cover of “Johnny B. Goode” by the Sex Pistols. I don’t know how he was first hearing this stuff, but Brad was unwittingly showing me up to be a total punk-rock dilettante.
Of all the records we spun, that summer, however, there were two in particular that really sank their hooks into me, and both continue to be all-time favorites today, regardless of era or categorization. Those albums were the eponymous debut LP by Generation X and Concrete by 999.
With the former, all it really took was a solitary play of “Ready Steady Go” to get me onboard. Where their relative forbears in the Pistols and The Clash repeatedly sang about destroying all things “rock n’ roll,” Generation X remained avowed fans, proudly name-checking outfits like the Beatles, the Stones and Bob Dylan in this ode to a mid-to-late `60s pop music television program. But that reverence was brazenly offset by this amazing sound — the sheer tone of Derwood Andrews’ guitar -- a brash, electrified roar that was at once densely melodic and unthinkably distorted, and it was all over this LP. Coupled with suitably yobbish choruses, Tony James’ insistent bass, Mark Laff’s pugnacious drums and the distinctive vocals of a gent who was shortly to take over the world, that being the endearingly sneery Billy goddamn Idol, Generation X was fucking unstoppable. While dismissed by many of the punk orthodoxy for being unapologetically poppy, there was just no arguing with that first album, allegedly recorded in a single week with finished cuts often culled from manic, single takes. To this day, it sounds like precious little else, and Derwood’s guitar still gets my blood rushing (especially the intro clang of "Kleenex").
Here they were lip-psyching to “Ready Steady Go" on “Top of The Pops”…
Even the album cover was awesome — a smeary, over-saturated, sepia-drenched portrait of a bunch of leather-clad nogoodnicks from an explosive future.
The other big record, Concrete by 999, wasn’t quite as overt, but matched Generation X in its insistency and attitude. Kicking off with energetic “So Greedy” (the first song Brad played for me), Concrete boasted a taut, musical finesse you probably weren’t going to find on records by their punky contemporaries. Where Generation X's songs sounded feral and deliberately rudimentary, 999’s playing was tight, urgent and sharp, but with more of an airier sonic dynamic than a lot of their peers. I didn’t know this, at the time, but 999 was formed by a gent named Keith Lucas, who’d honed his chops some years earlier as a guitarist playing in the pub rock band, Kilburn & the The High Roads alongside fellow proto-punk rocker Ian Dury (later of the Blockheads). Swept up in the energy and impact of the era, Lucas quit the High Roads, changed his name to the punkier Nick Cash (as in: to steal), and formed 999 — named after the British emergency telephone number — with his brother Guy on lead guitar.
Somewhat ironically, by the time Concrete was released in 1981, 999 were being perceived, in British Punk circles, to be second-stringers pretty much on their descent, following their more well-received albums like 999 and Separates, featuring incendiary singles like “Emergency” and “Homicide.” But back in Quogue, we didn’t have that context. All I knew was that this 999 record sounded liked an explosion of pure adrenalin that could not be found on most of the rock albums of the day, when the rest of the world was determined to keep listening to Journey, the J. Geils Band and Billy Squier.
Beyond the hiccupy freneticism of “So Greedy,” there were covers of garage nuggets like “Little Red Riding Hood” by Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs and “Fortune Teller” by the Rolling Stones, as well as stomping chant-alongs like “Public Enemy No.1,” “Break It Up" and “Don’t You Know I Need You.” Beyond that, alongside some filler like “Silent Anger” and “Mercy Mercy,” the Nines tried their hand at more exotic fare than most of their safety-pinned peers via atmospheric workouts like “Bongos on the Nile” and “Taboo,” but the “big single” was “Obsessed,” a frantic homage to the Spaghetti Western scores of Ennio Morricone, replete with “hoo-hah” chants and suitably twangy guitar hooks, all framing a song about Nick Cash’s fiery libido. Here they are performing it (well, miming along to it) with great, pogo-y enthusiasm, on a children’s show (!!!) called “Cheggers Plays Pop”
At my first opportunity, back in the city, I hungrily sought out both Generation X and Concrete, but they were not entirely simple to track down. This being just prior to my discovery (via my pal Spike) of the myriad joys of record shopping in Greenwich Village, I took Brad’s tip and checked out the Crazy Eddie’s on East 57th Street, just off of Third Avenue, who had a surprisingly enviable selection of imported vinyl. This shortly became a regular stop, for me.
By the following summer, all things Punk had given way to all things Hardcore Punk, and Brad was still ahead of the pack, along with our mutual friend Rich, who’d turned me onto bands like The Mob, Flipper and the fabled New York Thrash cassette. Brad, meanwhile had moved on from late `70’s British Punk to evangelize homegrown hardcore outfits like Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Black Flag, DOA, the Circle Jerks and this amazing compilation called Let Them Eat Jellybeans, which opened up a whole new world of options. Things were happening in real time, now, and life was getting genuinely exciting.
Funnily enough, about a year earlier, I’d been taken to a dude ranch in Wyoming wherein my family befriended a family from Washington D.C. named the Blows. The youngest of the Blow clan (and yes, that was their real name) was this kid named Wendel, who was slightly older than myself. Wendel mopily stomped around with a shaved head and combat boots. As I recall, Wendel also had a habit of spitting at my feet when we crossed paths. In any case, he was allegedly a bass player in a local band called S.O.A. (which stood for State of Alert, although I almost had my lights punched out when I questioned whether it would be more grammatically correct to say Alertness). Unsurprisingly, Wendel and I never became friends, but one of the bands Brad was touting that following summer was none other than S.O.A., whose music on the Flex Your Head compilaton (another sterling Brad recommendation) was truly bracing. As a footnote for the non-record geeks amongst you, S.O.A.’s lead singer was one Henry Garfield, who later changed his name to Rollins, joined Black Flag and the rest is blah blah blah.
As further and further summers went by and we all assumed our respective trajectories of adulthood, our paths and our tastes naturally diverged. I remember running into Brad a few years later, and he’d started listening to bands I’d consider unthinkable, like Lynyrd Skynyrd. Rich, meanwhile, became a full-time Deadhead, for a while, although I can’t say I have any idea what he’s into these days. I pretty much stayed the course, and invariably take my preferred music way more seriously than I arguably should. I still listen to records like Generation X and Concrete to this day (although you won’t find the latter on Spotify, for those of you addicted to lazy convenience).
But I will absolutely never forget how these friends -– and countless others like Zachary T, Billy K, Ralph M, John C, Sean H, Rob B, Rob D, Jay F, Charlie F, Walter W, Tim R, Ben K and several more -– opened those initial doors for me, infusing and enriching my life with those sounds that retain the freshness and intensity of the feelings I experienced when I first heard them.
For that, I will always be grateful.
ADDENDUM:
Brad and I in the summer of 2001, just prior to my wedding...
Some of the original vinyl discussed in the paragraphs above....
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